Joel Parsons

artist, writer, and curator in Memphis, TN (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,'script','https://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); ga('create', 'UA-77824032-1', 'auto'); ga('send', 'pageview');

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Otherwise Love’s Body at Protest (bouquet)

2015, five signs for protest performance, mixed materials, installation view at You+Me, Crosstown Arts

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Otherwise Love’s Body at Protest

ink on paper, for Number: An Independant Journal of the Arts

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“Beholding and Being Held” at Crosstown Arts

This Sunday at Crosstown Arts, Joel Parsons will present a performance titled "Beholding and Being Held" that is part of the sculptor's month-long exhibition "You...

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Art: The year’s 10 Best Exhibitions

Joel Parsons, "You Are the Hole: An Exhibition in Four Acts" at Crosstown Arts: Flamboyant, operatic, spontaneous, this installation, a combination of works on paper and a dozen or so floor sculptures, was a vast lyrical project that succeeded in its vaunting Wagnerian ambitions and in its echoes of a death-infused culture swayed by loss and absence. Unforgettable.

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installation view, You are the hole

2015; Crosstown Arts, Memphis TN

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Joel Parsons’ extraordinary ‘You Are the Hole’ laments death of love

"The floor pieces, rough, angular, feeling improvised and spontaneous, resemble odd grave markers, skeletal monuments, torn and ragged robes for doped-up manikins, defunct light sources. The flamboyant nature of "You Are the Hole" — the mouth, the orifice, the absent person, the grave — lends itself to a camp interpretation, just as its somber quality gives it an aura of sorrow and mourning. The brilliance of the thing is in its inextricable melding of these factors into a sort of Grand Guignol cri de coeur of rage and desire."

“In essence, the installation is a vast lyrical project that succeeds in its vaunting Wagnerian ambitions and in its echoes of a death-infused culture swayed by loss and absence.”

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Situations From an Unfinished Romantic Ballet

2012; installation view of a corps of 14 sculptures, with detail views of Overture: My Soggy Banter and Ugh! My Love, My Vicious Retreat, Our Humid Ambivalence, and Entertaining a Flame; mixed media

Sculptural maquettes for hypothetical ballets based on a romantic relationship are presented atop tenuously balanced figurative pedestals whose shapes are based on balletic movements.

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Otherwise Love’s Body at Protest

2016; ink on paper, for Number: An Independant Journal of the Arts

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you’re thrown, you’re a rose / giving myself all the permissions / #wip (at The Medicine Factory)

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Open Rehearsal

2012; solo rehearsal of Steven McMahon’s classical ballet pas de deux The Lovely Story of Us under our bed sheet, with mylar mirror studio installation.

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“You Are the Hole is the theatre of desire, abstracted. By presenting the self as something constructed and performed, Joel Parsons gently prods the human dichotomy of yearning to divulge and yearning to conceal.

Using the structural components of a theatre, he establishes an installation space that is simultaneously formal and intimate. Occupying the transformed stage are sculptures in voluptuous pinks and nudes, a flesh-like latex curtain and dozens of small drawings. Parsons has made a zine to accompany the exhibition, which will be available in the gallery.

The culmination is Parsons’ performance of his originally-choreographed piece, “Beholding and Being Held.”

Joel Parsons is an artist, writer, and curator based in Memphis, TN. He is an Assistant Professor of Art and Director of Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College, co-director of Beige, an otherwise space for art and performance, and a founding member of the ArtsMemphis Artist Advisory Council. A graduate of Rhodes College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he has exhibited his work in Memphis at the Powerhouse, Material, and Southfork Gallery, as well as at Western Exhibitions in Chicago, and venues in Peru, India, and South Africa.”

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Pas de Bud

used in performance 2012 - present; beer cans, socks, tapes

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still from Beholding and Being Held

2016; hour-long performance with roses and latex curtain

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Otherwise Love’s Body at Protest

2016; ink on paper, for Number: An Independant Journal of the Arts

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Pas de Deux and Variation

2011; installation views, with Partnering Rehearsal photographs, Mirror, Arch Stretcher, and Barre and Rosin Box

In this installation the gallery was converted into a provisional ballet rehearsal space. During the run of the exhibition I used the space to attempt to learn both roles of a romantic pas de deux, choreographed by my partner, Steven McMahon.

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Pas de Deux and Variation: Partnering Rehearsals (8, 11, 19, and 23 of 24)

2011; archival inkjet prints, 22x24″

For this series of photographs, found and discarded materials were used to create tenuously balanced constructions for the camera. Each represents a moment of weight sharing or partnering found in Steven McMahon’s ballet, The Lovely Story of Us.

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Studio Barre (I am so sorry)

2012; mylar, wood, wood filler, packing tape, screws, found photo, rhinestones, theatrical lighting gel